“Document Management” sounds so tedious, labour intensive and time consuming.

It may not be a bundle of laughs, but it should not take time and it should cut costs from your bottom line.

To ease the burden, we have been inspired by a recent blog from Xerox with four easy tips to help you toward better document management.

1. Print smarter (if at all)

According to the Xerox blog, the average business spends approximately 3% of their annual revenue on printing, making it the third largest expense behind rent and payroll.

Most companies underestimate how much they’re spending by around 40%. That’s a big margin of error – and a lot of wasted money.

Simple shifts, like printing on both sides of the paper (duplex) whenever possible, is a good place to start. So is restricting colour printing.

Both save a lot of toner.

FUJIFILM print and multifunction devices let you set permissions and restrict colour printing to specific documents, departments or employees.

Perhaps even more important than managing the prints you need is managing the ones you don’t.

It sounds unbelievable but almost half of printed pages are discarded.

Another 20 percent are never picked up from the printer at all!

You can stop this in its tracks with printers that don’t print until the user shows up at the printer and validates the print job with a PIN code or swipe and release access.

This has the added benefit of securing data so that only the user can access the printed document.

But perhaps the most effective way to reduce your printing costs is by outsourcing your print management to an expert.

Managing your own print environment can take much more time, effort and resource than you realise – or want to invest.

A managed print services (MPS) strategy can potentially cut your costs by up to 30% and give you a single point of contact who can manage your vendors, handles supplies ordering, and give you a detailed understanding of your print environment.

They’ll also provide support and advise you on industry-standard best practices.

For more information on FUJIFILM Managed Print Services click here.

2. Assess your equipment

While repeating expenses should be the first place to look when you want to cut costs, you also need to examine your hardware.

A print assessment can identify opportunities to save money and boost efficiency.

If you’re one of the many organisations that can’t say immediately how many printers are in your office, where they’re located or who’s printing on them, you should call an IT solutions provider, office equipment dealer or FUJIFILM and ask about an assessment today.

While investing in new equipment may seem more like spending than saving, outdated office equipment can cost you money that you’d probably rather keep in your pocket.

Outdated equipment is inefficient, often goes unused in favour of better, new equipment, and is probably the source of a lot of costly repairs.

A print assessment can also tell you whether your devices are placed appropriately for the teams they serve, or whether certain devices are over or under-utilised.

3. Go digital

Digitising data can be a highly effective way to reduce your costs.

It can also have several other benefits that can help you build a better business overall.

Digitising documents and storing them in the cloud reduces expenses by reducing printing, and by improving productivity.

Digitisation can cut paper out of the way you invoice, report financials, manage legal and human resource forms and handle other time-consuming processes.

It also means you’ll potentially need less office space since you’ll have fewer physical records to store.

What’s more, you’ll spend less money on supplies like paper and toner.

Solutions like FUJIFILM ApeosWare Management Suite 2.0 enable you to take control of how you print, copy, scan and fax documents, and extract maximum value from your FUJIFILM multifunction devices.

With many businesses looking to move from a paper-intensive environment to a paper-less workflow, they will use the functionality of intelligent capture, to turn hard paper into soft paper documents.

Now they can scan a document for immediate use without additional steps of creating files, renaming documents and importing it to an application on their desktop or laptop to be shared or stored.

With FUJIFILM multifunction devices, the user can scan, store and save files direct to leading web-based filing apps like GoogleDrive, SharePoint, DropBox and many more, with the press of a button.

They can also access files from these apps, in real time, whilst they’re at the device.

This allows employees to work with ease, and businesses have full visibility of how their information is being used, shared and managed.

To provide SMB, SME and start-ups the tools to go digital, FUJIFILM launched Smart Work Gateway in 2016 to provide affordable solutions that allow businesses to upgrade their document and workflow processes with minimal investment.

4. Enable a remote office

More employees work remotely today, than ever before and for good reason.

Telecommuting can limit absences, increase productivity, and even help your business save money.

It may even score you a better team of employees.

A study by Stanford professor, Nick Bloom, found that remote workers were more productive, got more done, worked longer hours, took fewer breaks, and used less sick time than their in-office counterparts.

Employees who telecommuted – or had the option to do so – also demonstrated better retention and higher levels of job satisfaction.

The study estimated that, on average, companies saved an estimated (USD) $2,000 per every employee who worked from home.

Mobility is impacting how employees access information.

The use of mobile phones, laptops and tablets is on the rise and with more people working remotely, it is increasingly important that workplaces are flexible with their BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) policies and systems.

With solutions like Cloud on Demand Print (CODP), Server on Demand Print (SODP), businesses are switching on productivity and simplifying workflows with strong ROI gains in time, costs and resources.

Original Article from FUJIFILM